


Parasitoid

by hornspointedup



Category: Mortal Kombat (Video Games), Mortal Kombat - All Media Types
Genre: Body Hair, Bugs & Insects, Cannibalistic Thoughts, Death Threats, Exophilia, F/M, Huddling For Warmth, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Scratching, Sharing Body Heat, Threats of dismemberment, Unrequited...something, Unresolved Tension, blood mention, hair pulling (sort of), threats of oviposition
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-02
Updated: 2019-12-02
Packaged: 2021-02-25 20:35:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 759
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21601582
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hornspointedup/pseuds/hornspointedup
Summary: Sometimes two people have to hunker down for the night in merciless environmental conditions. Can body heat be shared between the literal and figurative cold-blooded?Another unbeta'd piece where two morally terrible characters fail at basic koncepts like kommunication.And I fail to write dialog.
Relationships: D'vorah/Kano
Comments: 7
Kudos: 17





	Parasitoid

**Author's Note:**

> I never expected to be writing cuddling as threatening, but here we are. 
> 
> This work may come off as unwanted/forced physical contact, so heads up if that's a NOPE for you. Otherwise it's tagged Mature more to be on the safe side than anything else.

Desert nights are cruel, dry, and cold. He clings to her chilly chitin, swearing the need to huddle for warmth, fully knowing there’s not a warm drop of ichor in her body. She grasps his half-naked flesh, voice laced with loathing: the only reason he still has a face is because he’s best kept intact until minutes from dying of hypothermia. His corpse will still retain enough heat to serve as her incubator. 

He feels every tweezing pinch as his body hair catches in the fine grooves of her exoskeleton, her twitching ovipositors scraping over his skin. She pushes against his chest plate, claws scuffing the glass, so he retaliates by pressing a wide hand against her stomach, a thick finger running over the deep groove he knows to split her center; he finds her abdomen far softer than anticipated. She stills, ready to strike, tightens vice-like around him, hissing his fingers will not be missed. He rests the cold metal of his face against her neck, the flickering glow a reminder he could decapitate her and cauterize the stump with a but a wink. There’s the lightest scratch of her nails at his skull and for a moment he thinks he feels blood, but then his skin goes numb - her venom seeping into his hairline. He wonders if the supple lines at her neck would feel like biting into lizard, that slow give just before the tough skin tears and blood spills over his tongue.

~~~ _This one wants to burrow so deep under his ribs no one would know the wiser when his corpse was found half-buried in the glassy sand, the result of his failed attempt to render her ash by his gaze, sparkling like crystalized honey stuck to his hairs. His own inferior workers would carry his body back to their filthy Hive only for this one to burst forth in renewed vigor after consuming him from within. Ten thousand eggs hatch, strong buzzing multitudes that in turn would morph his workers into the ranks of the Kytinn, their shared traits resulting in an unstoppable mega-colony of scheming, vicious soldiers, the best from both surviving.…_ ~~~ 

She spasms, jerks her head away, grasps him so tight he can barely breathe. He nearly blows her head open after all but stops when her inhuman eyes fixate on him, the hand previously pushing at his chest plate slipping into his thatch of hair and quivering briefly. His eye flickers to her parted lips and oh bloody hell what is he even thinking. In his hesitation she regains her hyper-aware poise and scowls to the point of unhinging her jaw. He expects a faceful of acid, but she merely settles into an uneasy embrace, muttering he will be dead soon enough and this one must ensure he’s still awake and aware of his fate as he dies. He smirks, hand still resting on her stomach, the other squeezing the back of her neck, idly stroking a finger over a ridge. He could still kill her in that time, he reminds her. Then they perish together, she replies. Her eggs will still hatch regardless, and the larvae will feast on his flesh. Her lips find his neck this time, slightly mouthing his quickening pulse, darkness their only witness.

***

In the morning while sunning on an outcropping she notices a hair stuck in the crook of her elbow. Confused, she picks it off, only to now recognize a dozen or more curling out of rough places where her chiton splits and bends, from chest to ovipositors. She passes a hand over her neck and feels another. In a flurry she yanks them off not unlike a human discovering they’re crawling with fleas. 

_It’s for the best he lived after all! His self-poisoned corpse would make for a poor incubator! The resulting gnats would hatch drunk! And covered in corse, useless hair! Mammalian hair that would stab and sting and work its way under the skin!_

Her chittering rant got his attention - and for once she was unaware of how near he stood. They stare at one another a heartbeat too long. With a growl she pushes off into flight, her powerful wings iridescent in the morning sun, casting the briefest flashes of kaleidoscopic color over him as he stands transfixed while she rises into the ever-brightening sky.

He rubs the back of his neck, still experiencing the odd twinge from her venom, and follows her path, the occasional glowing gnat circling his head and flying onward as if to guide him along.

**Author's Note:**

> During a cold 11/26/19 3:00 am I was trying to go back to sleep when an idea just popped into my brain: “that trope where Kano and D’vorah huddle for warmth except insects aren’t warm-blooded, so now what?"  
> In an exhausted delirium I took another 30 minutes to bang out the draft. As I typed I free associated into “that other trope where someone gets lost thinking about what their kids with a potential partner would be like.” Except bugs.
> 
> It's almost like D'vorah is the one who's actually impacted by the cold and Kano knows it. It's not like she likes him or anything! And it's not as if he cares - he's just protecting his investment!
> 
> (I will go down ~~in the Sea of Blood~~ with this ship).


End file.
